Monday, January 30, 2006

Anyway, the other day Jingping and I were talking about memory. We were talking about how strange it is to remember things from very, very early on. I point out that things seem dim in most of my oldest memories, like the lights are turned down low; she pointed out that the very earliest ones seem almost completely visual. It's true for me: I can remember images from when I was 3 or 4 years old, and specific events from as early as 4; but, I can't remember many details of what it was like to experience those things.

Anyway, people, what's the earliest things you can remember? I know for certain that I can remember my 4th birthday. Some other, foggier recollections seem to be even older, but I have no way of dating them.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Friday, January 06, 2006

Let's talk about the number '2006'.

What makes it special?

First, we should find its factors. These include 2, 17, and 59; a sparse number, with only 3 factors! Not as sparse as 2005, however, whose only factors were 5 and 401. What this means I cannot say, though I sense that big prime numbers are dangerous things. Maybe this will be a better year. Next year has the factors 3, 3, and 223, and while 223 is a pretty number it is also a relatively big prime (11% of the year of which it is a part, compared with this year's 3% and last year's 20%), so maybe we should take advantage of this year's maximum primeness of 59.

This is of course assuming that prime factors of years have any significance at all. It could be we should be using a lunar calander, or incorporating month, day, or even time along with year. These things are difficult and it is correspondingly difficult to understand them.

I must stress that while 59 may seem to be an innocuous number, it is not coincidentally also the sum of the days in the first two months of the year (or the second and third months of the year). So this may be a signal to do all you can in these days because then the next prime is 17, which terrifies me, coming as it does between 13 and 19.

Now, factors done and considered, what else could be special about 2006? Why, this is the future, and no one can know what the future holds. This could be the year in which fusion power takes hold, or man returns to the Moon, or he travels beyond! Machines could become sentient and enslave humankind, or a terrible Metavirus could sweep the Earth and destroy indiscriminately 99.7% of all human life.

I however suspect that 2006 will be suspiciously similar to 2005. On a small scale, of course, since we are so very small, noisy fluctuations due to the heat of the Earth's mantle may be perceptible to us, as changes in quality of life, love or comfort, or ups and downs in the state of politics. Remember, however, that this is just noise due to the heat emanating from the Earth's molten core, and that on the average 2006 is exactly like 1906 except with glowing LCD cell phones and lots of little Japonese comic books in the bookstores and probably fewer horses.

In closing remember, you have 53 days left (or possibly 84, but do not count on ambiguities) in which to crustify your dealings for the year 2006. After that time
it may be too late to turn things around.